


Where It Hurts

by marcasite



Series: For Love of You [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Series, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcasite/pseuds/marcasite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They stare silently at each other. He seems to be searching and she understands that there’s a lot between them unspoken. It’s something she can tell herself, over and over again, as if to make what this is between them something bigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where It Hurts

  
Show.

 

She tries not to be surprised when he shows up at her door.

The Tardis is quiet, she can feel the hum of anticipation (something is happening). She has stuffed as many things as she can squeeze into her duffel bag but not all of it will fit. She shrugs, it’s just things anyway. She’s long past caring about things. She drops a tray holding her rings, and watches removed as they scatter across the floor in a medley of chimes. He’s there, quietly bending to help gather the stray pieces.

“It’s all right, I have them.” she says from in front of him. Her gaze is trained on the floor. There is a lump in her throat, tight and unsettling. She keeps her hands by her side, opening and closing them in time to her nerves.

“Let me,” he says dryly. He stays behind her, watching. She sees his reflection in the mirror the Tardis had hung for her, hunched and blurred, a lasting image of how strange and unsettling his presence has become for her. He hands her the tray and straightens, taking a step back. Smiling, she places the tray down eyes still trained on him. He clears his throat as if to say something else.

But there’s nothing to say, she tells herself.

He moves toward her, his step cautious. “Adventure awaits, Miss Oswald,” he says.

She shrugs, glancing at her clothing strewn about her bed. “Why not. I get to pick this time. Last time we ended up covered in who even knows what, stuff I am still finding pieces of.” She shudders.

Why not. Leaving can wait for another day, it’s a time machine after all.

 

 

 

**Me.**

 

She knows she is home, can hear it by the telltale thump of landing, the sudden quiet that permeates the room. Her attention is drawn to the Doctor, who has hid himself quietly behind her. He has gone to the console, his habit of hiding in plain sight still his safety net. 

She knows a thing or two about habits.

“Home sweet home,” he calls. His voice is loud. She moves through the room, one last look through. (so she tells herself)

He comes around the console and leans against it. The light over him is almost bare and faint. She almost misses him. He’s watching her seriously, almost expectantly. She stops on the other side, nervous.

“I’m home,” she says slowly, and pauses, pulling at her jacket. “This does feel a bit deja-vu.”

She catches his gaze too but he looks away.

“This time, I don’t have any more tricks up my sleeves to get you to stay,” he says and says it like he means it. There’s a hitch in his voice and she frowns, crossing her arms in front of her chest. 

He’s slow and almost unsteady as he slowly walks around towards her. It’s as if he were trying to catch her or waiting to. She tries not to decide.

She sighs. “Come back for me in a week. One week.”

His gaze is too heavy for her then. She drops her bag and her hand curls into a fist. She tries to remember why she is leaving. Because, frankly, it’s almost a bit ridiculous how they got here.

They stare silently at each other though. He seems to be searching and she understands that there’s a lot between them unspoken. It’s something she can tell herself, over and over again, as if to make what this is between them something bigger.

“You’re trying to be brave,” he says softly.

It’s half an insult and half a bit of praise. Nope, she thinks. Not going to give in that easy.

“I’m trying to figure it out.”

Her hand slides through her hair, pushing a strand behind her ear. She drops her gaze to the side, watching for an interruption. It’s a pattern, she thinks, with him and with her. She could walk away without saying anything. She should. The thing is he wants that too.

“I’m trying to figure it out, this out,” she repeats. 

Her eyes feel heavy. The exhaustion is starting to creep up on her. It’s a strange cross of being here but not really being here, she knows that she is wavering. When did they become this?

“I don’t want to leave, I thought that we had something,” she continues, “more. I need to decide if I am ok with us, as whatever we are. Or if I am always going to want more.”

“You keep talking.”

Her mouth is tight. “You keep pushing me away.”

He frowns. She shuffles her feet against Tardis floor. He shifts closer but then stops himself. He’s nervous somehow and somehow she seems to know.

“You’re running away,” he says.

She says nothing more. 

 

 

 

**Where.**

 

“We’re not going,” he guesses as she watches him from her sofa as he opens the door to the Tardis. Or, in reality, he steps in without waiting for her to say anything.

There is a tight smirk on his mouth. She sighs and brushes her hair out of her eyes. She leans back and watches him as he closes the door behind himself.

“I recognize the signs,” he adds dryly.

She still hasn't said anything. Her flat is dimly lit, quiet and covered with new pieces of post and empty dishes. Her duffel bag is on the floor, unzipped and partially emptied.

“Has it been a week,” she wonders instead. She stands up and walks to the bedroom, already aware of him following her. She says nothing about how odd it is to have him here and not see him stop and look around for something to fiddle with. But this isn’t about that.

Stepping into the bedroom, she moves the pile of clothes spread over a mess of sheets and pillows. She reaches for a jumper and watches as the Doctor stops and stays in the frame of the door.

“Are you coming in?”

She asks and doesn’t smile. She’s patient, folding her jumper without taking her gaze away from him. She studies how he stands, sharp and tense. It’s different now. She can feel the weight of the distance between them. It comes in cracks; his shoulders are taunt, his hand tight against the frame of the door, and his body slowly bends to accommodate whatever it is that he’s trying to hide. 

“I don’t know what to say,” he says absently.

He looks away from her. She points to her handbag by the door.

“Can you hand me that?” she asks.

He shrugs and reaches awkwardly for the strap. He walks quietly to the bed, sitting on the very edge. He doesn’t hand her the bag and it drops over his lap.

“You could have left all that on the Tardis, why keep moving things back and forth? Or maybe you like having one foot in and one foot out?”

“Is that what you think?”

He frowns, studying her. “Does it matter what I think?”

She gives him that. Her gaze shifts over his face and she smiles at him, the first real smile she’s given into. She’s careful, even. She knows where they will end up. She starts to place the jumper in her hand down on the bed.

But she’s stopped, slowly, as his hand covers hers. His palm presses against the back of her hand, brushing over her skin. There’s nothing soft or practical about the gesture; he seems like he forgets what they are and his fingers graze over her knuckles. She almost flushes, meeting his gaze. She swallows first. He sighs after her.

There’s no pull, no push, and no inclination to go further. In a few minutes they both know he’s going to leave. She knows that he can’t stay, that he won’t stay, and she wonders if she isn’t the issue here. He will never wait for a goodbye. She will never believe him if he asked for one.

Still she lets him keep his hand over hers. Its a few minutes.

“No,” she says slowly. “I guess not. But tell you what?”

His eyes travel to hers, light and dark clashing. “What?”

“Come back tomorrow.”

 

 

 

**It.**

 

They start again like this.

Clara’s mobile buzzes in her hand as she’s walking back to her flat. She watches it for a moment, as the screen lights up to a dull blue and Doctor blinks over a number.

She picks up, despite herself. “Clara,” he says in greeting.

“Where are you?”

“You said come back tomorrow. Isn’t it tomorrow?”

There is heavy amusement in his voice. A pause follows as she hears a crash on the other line.

He clears his throat. “I’m at your flat. I think you may need a new flower vase. Um, and maybe some new pictures, pictures in frames. I may have used the wood for a thing.”

She rolls her eyes, not even going to ask. “Almost there now,” she says.

“Good. We have a things to do, no more running away.”

He’s insistent. Her eyes close and the corners of her mouth tug. She almost smiles. 

“Running away?” she asks and sighs. “No,” she says. “Maybe,” she says again.

“You don’t know,” he murmurs.

It’s an admission, for him an admission. A small answer for the circles they run around each other. He says it and it seems to be almost kind. It’s something that annoys her though. She feels her shoulders weighted down and she runs a hand against the nape of her neck, rubbing the skin, small relief.

“I don’t know a lot of things.”

Her voice hitches slightly, as she takes a deep breath. She puts herself within another careful thought.

“Like what we are,” she adds.

Her eyes open slowly. She focuses on a few passing people as she slowly approaches her flat. She feels ready for what’s next. In her head, she knows the answers already.

“Or even what we’re not,” she says.

Doctor’s voice is quiet over the line. “Do we have to?” he asks as an afterthought. He doesn’t add anything. They’re talking to each other as if neither of them is really there. 

She still shakes her head.

“I dunno,” she sighs. “Maybe we should. Could be good, you always like a story.”

“No time now, Clara” he says. They sound like people who just aren’t ready.

It’s odd but she finds herself smiling. Unsteady at first, the corners of her mouth rise and she feels a bit lighter. In the end, the heart wants what it wants. 

“I’m staying,” she murmurs.

He sighs and she listens. Between them, there is a shift in noise, she can imagine him as he tinkers with some item or another, the way the tension shifts between coming to the surface and disappearing. It’s an intimate thought, something she never asked for and something he seems to want to give.

There is that space again and a breath next. “I know,” he says and finally.

She hangs up at the door to the flat. She is ready for what’s next.

 

 

 

**Hurts.**

 

Clara stays in the Tardis. He mumbles under his breath at all the stuff she insists on bringing with her; her books, more clothes, and pictures. Lots of pictures. 

_There were two ways that this could go:_

The first, she knows she could stay for as long as she wants. She knows that she could stay and travel with the Doctor for as long as they can. She loves what this life is, love what they are together and she could stay. She knows she loves him and carries with her a small pang of guilt that she could so readily admit that after telling Danny she never would. But it is what it is and she knows she was born for this.

Or she leaves. She leaves and she goes and teaches and leaves the Doctor behind. She was prepared to do that last summer, let him go home and not fuss over her. It was easier to do that, easier to walk away when she thought it was for his own good. But now, she’s tasted him, loved him, and lived with him. She wonders if she could really let him go.

_But it happens like this:_

Clara stays in the Tardis. He mumbles under his breath at all the stuff she insists on bringing with her; her books, more clothes, and pictures. Lots of pictures. “Don’t know what you need all this for anyway.”   
She carries this tight, swelling feeling that floats slowly to the bottom of her stomach as she watches him drag a box across the floor.

There was no other decision to make, no other path she could have chosen. She puts no time to it, will give him all the space he needs. She smiles to herself, time is what we have she thinks. There is an understanding she gives herself, quiet and maybe waiting, waiting for her to finally catch up. 

There’s no more hesitation, no more games. She stops thinking about everything else. This is us, then.

“Oh, and I want a cat.”

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty but I did promise to work through the issues with the last story. Thank you Kara for your thoughts and I could not have done this without prodding and pokes from Lindsay.


End file.
